Thursday's Child (1943) User Reviews

Sally Ann Howes - in Jane Austen's parlance "A very handsome woman"

[howardmorley · 6/10 · 21 July 2012]

Sally Ann Howes was a most photogenic actress in her best film years.Her two films that spring to mind are "The Admirable Crichton" (1957) playing Lady Mary and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (1968) playing Truly Scrumptious.As an ingénue in "Thursday's Child" (1943) she was very young to take the lead role with Wilfred Lawson but your eyes are constantly drawn to her and the film director is especially generous with close ups of her.It is a simple tale of the making of a child film star and her subsequent very mature decision to renounce temporary fame & fortune for a more substantial general education especially science in the footsteps of her heroine Madame Curie, who along with her husband Pierre invented radium.

FGM's above very fulsome user comments from 2004 explain the plot so I will not repeat them.I enjoyed this film which you can see in its entirety on www.you tube.com (as of July 2012) for those viewers who wish to see this rare film and to see how Sally's most impressive looks matured into beauty since 1943.

A Meteoric Career.

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 28 June 2014]

I realize that Sally Ann Howes was only thirteen when this was shot, and that it was her debut on film. But I'm afraid she's terribly scrumptious. Let all men acknowledge the maniac within.

The director, Rodney Ackland, must know it too because the film opens with a woman who appears to be a housewife, dashing about, straightening things preparatory to a visit from someone important. She rushes to the staircase and shouts for Fennis to hurry up. "Yes, Mommie," and Fennis' long bare legs appear on the screen. That's all we see of Fennis for the moment. Those shapely and exquisitely palpable limbs in very short shorts. Gulp, and then she dashes back upstairs to finish dressing. Now, I ask you -- who's kidding whom? In the very next scene, we have an attractive blond running around, also getting dressed, in lingerie that I don't even have a word for. The top part is like a slip but the bottom part ends in loose shorts. The blond is shapely too. I tell you, it's disgusting. It's prurient. You would never see pretty girls running around in their skivvies in an American movie of the period.

In a later scene, in the beauty shop where she works, the blond, Phoebe, in a moment of exasperation, at least has the DECENCY to say, "Oh, heck," instead of, "Oh," -- well, something else. As I think the world must know by now, Americans think nothing but morally pure thoughts. And as a man of firm Coptic beliefs, I'm always sure to carry a bible around in my shirt pocket. That bible has stopped two bullets from reaching my body, so far. A rather large medallion of St. Christopher stopped a poison dart in the jungles of Borneo. Damned Wogs.

Anyway, the blond, Phoebe, is dying to get into the movies so she visits the casting director at a studio, taking Howes along with her. The director's Gofer spots Howes in the waiting room and after a brief, rude, appraisal, hustles her in to meet the director. And what a character the director is -- he reclines on a sofa like Nero, he's wildly unkempt, the bit of hair he has is a fright wig, his default expression is revulsion, he has a Hitchcockian figure, and he has Wagner's "Burgermeister von Nürnberg" turned up full blast on the gramophone. When Howes objects that she can't hear anything, the director shouts, "Turn dzah wecord OVER!"

That first scene in the movie, when Ackland shows merely the legs of the principal actress, is not a one-off. The direction is skilled throughout. At one point, in Howes' meeting with the director, the camera focuses on one flabby hand rising slowly and then imperiously flicking its fingers as he orders her out of the room. She's finally hired at fifty pounds a week. Unusual but effective camera angles show up periodically. Howes has some important scenes on that staircase. I'm tempted to read symbolism into it but it's too much trouble.

It's really a quietly comic film, despite Howes' stuffy and truculent father, Wilfred Lawson, who went on to unforgettable humorous effect in later films like "Tom Jones" and "The Wrong Box," in which he was the staggering butler. None of the characters is really "bad."

However, there's is some distress generated because Phoebe, Howes' older sister, wanted a part in the movie and didn't get it. Disappointment ensues. The star of the movie condescends to Howes in an insulting manner. Then the studio hypes Howes' "official biography" by turning her into a rich girl who rides and owns wolfhounds. Howes is a candid and forthright girl and objects to much of this. Felix Aylmer is the arid studio boss. He runs everything. He hires and fires people. He must be a very agreeable studio head because whatever he says, everyone nearby agrees with him.

The film turns dramatic towards the end and loses some of its charm. The focus is blurry. Is the old patriarchal system disappearing? Is a woman justified in developing a case of ambition? In any case, the director ends with a choker close up of Howes' smiling, angelic face and she gazes from the train's window on her way to a new life, joyous and unrestrained, at a stern Scottish boarding school.

Don't Let Your Daughter Become A Film Star

[malcolmgsw · 5/10 · 26 April 2014]

Unlike Hollywood the UK did not tend to make many films about the film industry.Those that they made didn't tend to be long remembered either.Ones that come to mind being Okay For Sound,Brittania Of Billingsgate and Death On The Set.This film is virtually unknown,it has not so far as I am aware received a TV showing.Basically Sally Ann Howes is taken along with her ambitious sister to a film studio for a part.Sister doesn't get part but Howes does and becomes a star.This causes great problems at home since her sister leaves home in a fit of jealousy,a rift is driven between mother and father and Howes goes off to a Scottish boarding school.All very curious.Maybe a comment on fame but an unlikely denouement.

Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 26 April 2024]

Or in film, or on the radio. Not when she doesn't want it. But in the case of extraordinarily beautiful 13 year old Sally Anne Howes, who could not see her as a star. Unlike her beautiful but otherwise ordinary older sister Eileen Bennett (the one actually auditioning for a role in the film), Howes has "it", that something special quality that Elinor Glyn described as a gift that only a few are bestowed with.

Jealous adult co-stars (particularly a haughty leading lady) are disdainful of the attention that the studio gives Howes, and treat her with contempt. Mother Kathleen O'Regan pushes her to further her stardom which Howes really doesn't want, and that sets up the conflict as Howes resents the falsehoods written about her, the way others change around her, and the demands of the movie moguls.

In spite of playing the part of a young girl who doesn't want to be a movie star, Howes shows great promise as a movie star, and even though her career had more success for stage, Howes has fantastic screen presence. This also parallels her own life as she didn't focus on her performing career until much later. A young Stewart Granger is a welcome presence as her sister's boyfriend who gives Howes great advice. A decent drama with elements of comedy tossed in, resulting in a good film.

A Fascinating Car Wreck of a Film

[richardchatten · 4/10 · 7 May 2017]

Based on a 1941 novel by Donald Macardle, 'Thursday's Child' was the first and last film ever directed by playwright & screenwriter Rodney Ackland (1908-1991). According to his memoir 'The Celluloid Mistress' (1954), his yearned-for debut as a director was severely compromised in execution by factors of both time and money, the completed film minus key scenes Associated British pulled the plug on before they could be filmed; which presumably explains the various loose ends.

Ackland's 12 year-old discovery Sally Ann Howes in the title role is certainly convincing as a young prodigy who becomes a hit in a movie called 'Strange Barrier'. The film starts light-heartedly enough - and we get the usual jokes about vulgarian studio personnel at the fictitious Marathon Studios - but the tone gets dismayingly melodramatic in its later stages, with direction to match. Veteran cameraman Desmond Dickinson does his best, but the haste, low budget and director Ackland's inexperience shows in mike shadows, stagy compositions and exaggerated closeups in the style of Eisenstein extremely jarringly cut together. (During one key scene between the heroine's mother and her elder sister I became distracted by the almost Caligari-esquely stylized twigs dangling outside the window behind them.) The experience resembles watching a tightrope walker teetering this way and then that as one wonders what technical goof the film is going to commit next.

A star at age 13!

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 9/10 · 27 January 2004]

There are some remarkable similarities between Sally Ann Howes and Julie Andrews. Both began their careers as singing ingenues in the same era. Julie's stepfather Ted Andrews was a radio entertainer; Sally Ann's father Bobby Howes starred in West End musicals, playing a character similar to Eddie Cantor's but less brash and more wistful. Sally Ann Howe's most famous film is 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang', which is a clear attempt to copy the formula of 'Mary Poppins'.

'Thursday's Child' is Sally Ann Howes's film debut: at age 13, she proves herself an astonishingly accomplished actress of almost supernatural beauty. She is cast here as Fennis Wilson, the younger daughter of a tradesman's family. Her 20-year-old sister Phoebe has ambitions to become a film actress, and wangles an audition at Elstree Studios. As part of a ruse to prevent her mother from chaperoning, Phoebe brings Fennis along to the studio. Meanwhile, Elstree are seeking a child actress to star in 'Strange Barrier' (sounds like a science-fiction film). A casting director (with an annoyingly exaggerated Bow Bells accent) spots Fennis waiting for her sister. He persuades Fennis to read for the role, and ... a star is born!

This premise might seem unbelievable, were it not for the very real talent of Sally Ann Howes. Fennis is soon offered a contract, at 50 pounds weekly: an astonishing sum for wartime Britain. Fennis's father is a dispensing chemist (a druggist), played by Wilfrid Lawson: there's a very touching scene in which he carefully measures drugs onto his balance scales while pondering the fact that his daughter has a chance to make more money in a few months than his father made in an entire year.

SPOILERS COMING. Frustrated actress Phoebe becomes envious of her younger sister's success. Eventually, Phoebe leaves home ... with no money and no prospects, a vulnerable young woman who will be easy prey for any man on the make. Oddly, this subplot is left unresolved at the end of the film.

Stewart Granger is in the cast of this film, but he appears only briefly. Much better here is underrated character actor Anthony Holles as a man who counsels Fennis's mother on the consequences of her daughter's sudden stardom. Gerhard Kempinski (looking amazingly like Danny DeVito) is annoying in a cliched 'funny' foreigner role.

Director-scenarist Rodney Ackland shows a sure hand with the script. Less happily, his directorial style is distinctive, but not in a favourable way. Ackland has a penchant for tight close-ups of unimportant objects, giving them more significance than they warrant in the script. This is especially blatant during a sequence in the Elstree canteen, when Fennis's mother (Kathleen O'Regan) suddenly encounters an actor wearing monster-movie makeup. We see a tight close-up of actress O'Regan screaming in terror. This would be appropriate in a horror movie or a suspense movie involving genuine menace, but in this context Ackland's penchant for close-ups puts far too much dramatic weight on what's clearly meant to be a comic-relief bit.

There's one extremely impressive montage sequence in 'Thursday's Child', depicting Fennis's rise to stardom. (Done much better than a similar sequence in 'What Price Hollywood.') I suspect that this montage was shot by a second-unit director, not Ackland.

BIG SPOILER NOW. The film's ending is unexpected but completely welcome. Fennis reads a biography of Marie Curie, and is inspired to give up her acting career to become a research chemist. Ironically, earlier in the film, a press agent tried to ginger-up Fennis's studio biography by stating that her father (a lowly dispensing chemist) is a research chemist (a much more glamorous job). I'm impressed that 'Thursday's Child' tells its young female viewers to aspire to become scientists rather than actresses.

Modern audiences might have trouble following some of the wartime references in the dialogue, such as when Phoebe spends her 'coupons' to buy a birthday gift for Fennis. Still, this is an absolutely delightful film, starring a talented actress on the brink of womanhood. I'll rate 'Thursday's Child' 9 points out of 10.